Simon Hantai - Untitled (Pliage) - image-1

Lot 613 D

Simon Hantai - Untitled (Pliage)

Auction 1060 - overview Cologne
28.11.2015, 11:00 - Contemporary Art
Estimate: 70.000 € - 90.000 €

Simon Hantai

Untitled (Pliage)
1971

Watercolour on folded canvas. Approx. 88 x 73 cm. Framed under glass. Monogrammed and dated 'S.H. 71'. Signed and dated 'S.Hantai 1971' verso on canvas and work number "A.3.1.2.33". - Minor traces of age.

The Hungarian Artist Simon Hantai arrived in Paris in 1949 where he had close contact to the philosopher André Breton and his circle. In his short surreal period Hantai designed compositions with forms and lines which built a complex and contradictory system of organic elements.
After having distanced himself from Surrealism from 1950, his first folded pictures appeared which would become a trademark of the artist. His works, exhibited in particular in well known French museums, follow the pictorial tradition of the support/surfaces flow, an art movement that focuses on the analysis of various forms of expression of the image carrier.
Through a complex process the canvas is systematically folded or creased and then opened up again. The painting ground is therefore suggestively worked and the form is determined by the missing areas of colour. Any reference of drawing or the physical effect of painting ommited. The folding of the canvas in combination with painting leads therefore to the principle of chance, giving an unexpected play of colours. The contrasting structure, as seen in the present picture with the bright blue and the white of the canvas is one of Hantai's typical colour schemes.
„Je n'ai pratiquement fait que suggére ce qui se met en place et se déploie dans les dix dernières anneés de la carrière de Simon Hantaï. Il faudrait travailler, dans la méthode, dans la technique de l'artiste, le passage du plié au déplie et ce qu'on en retrouve dans l'organisation formelle du tableau: plié/déplie-ouvert, par exemple „Les manteaux de la Vierge“ et les toiles de 1969-1971 - plié/déplié-fermé par exemple les toiles de 1964-1965 (dont l'expression viscéral est nette) et la suite de 1967. Lorsqu'on aborde une oeu­v­re dont la charge émotionnelle et signifiante est aussi forte et aussi complexe, on aimerait n'en pas finir. D'autres reviendront, j'y reviendrai, il y a heureusment encore beaucoup à dire.” (Marcelin Pleynet, La levée de l'interprétation des signes ou Les manteaux de la Vierge, in: Pontus Hultén, Simon Hantaï, Ausst.Kat. Musée national d'art moderne, Paris 1976, not paginated).

Certificate

The authenticity of the present work has been confirmed by Daniel Hantaï from Archives Simon Hantaï, Paris, via email dated 5 November 2015.

Provenance

Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris; private collection, Belgium